Who's the Happiest?

08.16.10 11:39 PM ET

1. Republicans are 15 percent happier than Democrats.

In a Pew Research Center survey, 45 percent of Republicans described themselves as being very happy, compared with 30 and 29 percent of Democrats and independents, respectively. Republicans have been consistently happier than Democrats every single year since Pew began conducting these polls in 1972, and were 10 percent happier than Dems even during Jimmy Carter's term.

In a Harris poll, 44 percent of people aged 65 and over described themselves as happy, compared to 30 percent of 25-to-29-year-olds, 30 percent of 30-to-39-year-olds, and only 26 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds. University of California psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of
The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, notes that seniors "are emotionally wiser: They don't spend as much time with people who make them unhappy as young people do, and they don't take as many risks."

3. Residents of Hawaii are 8.5 percent happier than residents of West Virginia.

According to Gallup's annual Well-Being Index, the Aloha State is the nation's happiest, the Mountain State its saddest (and also its most obese.) The other happiest states are Montana, Minnesota, Utah, Iowa, Alaska, Nebraska, and both Dakotas. Scholars analyzing the WBI and taking into account all of its variables—including physical health, working conditions, and access to necessities—produced an additional study concluding that "states with large gay populations, such as Vermont, California, Massachusetts, Washington, and New Mexico, tend to have higher levels of well-being than do states with comparatively smaller gay populations, such as West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Ohio."

4. If you're a stay-at-home mom, there's a 36 percent chance that you're very happy.

And if you're a working mom, your chance of being very happy is exactly the same: 36 percent. And both types of moms share a 14 percent chance of being unhappy. But working moms have a 5 percent higher chance of being moderately happy. "What's so interesting is that often women without kids are found to be happier, and yet we are all trained to 'want' a happily-ever-after that includes children," says Hip Mama magazine founder Ariel Gore, author of
Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness.

5. Those born with two long alleles of the gene known as 5HTT are 17.3 percent happier than those with two short 5HTT alleles.

Maybe it's out of our hands. 5HTT facilitates the transport of serotonin. Alleles are DNA sequences that determine a gene's degree of efficiency. "Genetic factors significantly influence individuals' subjective well- being," write the authors of the study that yielded this stat. "We have identified one particular gene variant—5HTT long—as having a sizeable positive association with self-reported life satisfaction."

43 percent of married people describe themselves as very happy, compared to 24 percent of singles. What's more, married moms are 14 percent happier than single moms. "This is 100 percent financial," asserts Gore of the married mothers statistic. But she also found something surprising: "When I matched moms for income, the single mothers were actually significantly happier."

7. Members of the clergy are 509 percent happier than gas-station attendants.

According to the University of Chicago study that yielded this finding, clergy and firefighters make up the happiest of all professions, followed by travel agents, butlers, and architects. Special-ed teachers are 346 percent happier than amusement-park attendants, pilots are 222 percent happier than construction workers, and actors are 364 percent happier than roofers. And if you're an orthodontist, there's a 99 percent chance that you're happy—according to a study published in the world's only major nonprofit orthodontics-industry journal.

With its Happy Planet Index, the New Economics Foundation tracks emotional, environmental, and other types of well-being worldwide. The USA's HPI score matches Australia's and Sweden's, but doubles those of Cameroon, Mali, and Burkina Faso. Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates are tied happinesswise, but both are three times happier than Tanzania. Also tied, Kazakhstan and Bhutan are happier than Moldova, but sadder than Laos. The world's happiest country? Costa Rica, where, as the researchers point out, "almost 10 percent of the population live on under $2 a day."

10. If a friend living within half a mile of you becomes happy, there's a 42 percent chance that you'll become happy too.

Moreover, your chances for happiness increase 15.3 percent if someone intimately involved with you becomes happy, 9.8 percent when a friend of a friend becomes happy, and 5.6 percent when a friend of a friend of a friend becomes happy. "Joy is contagious, as are most emotions. This is because we are wired for empathy," says James Baraz, coauthor of
Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness. "Just hearing about someone else’s happiness can affect us. Even if we don’t hear about that person, the happiness travels."

The University of California psychology professor whose studies yielded this stat instructed one of his control groups to write "gratitude journals" in which they listed things they were thankful for. Upon the study's conclusion, this group identified itself as 25 percent happier than both a neutral group and a group that was instructed to list "hassles or annoyances that bothered them each day," counting burdens instead of blessings. Six months after the study was completed, the grateful group had fully retained its happiness advantage. "When we’re grateful, we feel we’ve received a blessing," Baraz says. "Even on a physical level, our bodies feel lighter and more open."

Emmons, Robert. Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007, p. 30.

12. African-Americans are 8 percent happier than Caucasians.

Forty percent of the African-American respondents in the latest Harris Poll Interactive Annual Happiness Index described themselves as happy, compared to 32 percent of white respondents, who as a group became 3 percent unhappier in a single year.

13. If your sibling who lives within a mile of you becomes happy, your chance of being happy increases by 14 percent.

The moods of distant siblings have no such effects, write the authors of the study that produced this stat. "We don't yet know the causes and effects. Could it be that the siblings are living in the same neighborhood, and this neighborhood is safer or wealthier or otherwise better?" wonders Lyubomirsky, who has received a grant from Notre Dame University to study more precisely how happiness propagates. "If I tell you to do an act of kindness to Peter, I can see whether Peter will then do an act of kindness to Susie and whether people who observe this will feel better, too."

Thirty one percent of people "who prefer to have a Starbucks in their community describe themselves as very happy. So do 29 percent of those who would rather have a McDonald's in their neighborhood," write the authors of the Pew survey that produced this stat. Twenty seven percent of those with no preference described themselves as very happy.

Or are you? The study that produced that dubious stat was conducted by the evangelically oriented Barna Group. According to a more credible Pew survey, Evangelicals are 10 percent happier than other Protestants, and folks of any faith who frequently attend religious services are happier than those who don't. Forty three percent of those attending services weekly or more call themselves very happy, compared to 31 percent of those who attend monthly and 26 percent of those who never attend services. "The biggest reason for this is the social support, the strong sense of community, and emphasis on family life" that avid religious participation usually provides, Lyubomirsky says.